Why is a pogrom called a riot?

Old
journalistic usages have to be re-examined for the times we live
in.

Semantics
became center stage again with George Bush`s use of the expression
"collateral damage" to refer to civilian casualties in the war
against Afghanistan. But while many of us in the media have expressed outrage
about this insidious, shameful euphemism for death, the one word which really
cannot have shades of meaning, there has been no serious questioning of other
instances of homicide -- not amounting to murder -- of the English language.

That
old words are being put to new uses in this millennium was forcefully brought
home to us after the events of September 11 2001 with the American use of
loaded terms like "war on terrorism". It became clear later that what
the Americans were waging was a war on Afghanistan, not even a guerilla
operation against the Taliban. As the smoke clears, the media must ask itself
why it succumbed without a fight to these manipulations of the English
language. As an American academic has pointed out, "New ties to Israel
notwithstanding, how many how many Indians view Palestinian suicide bombers as
terrorists? What about Iraq or Somalia? We have already seen questions along
these lines begin to arise."

Back
home, as the Indian Left loses its grip over public discourse, and the public
swallows Americanisms as easily as it does Big Macs and Coke, we forget that
the US worldview is so much at odds with that of the rest of the world that
accepting their semantics means accepting an entire worldview, entirely Made in
America. (Even the numerics are at odds: they call it 9/11, but we cannot, as
we are not so illogical as to put the date before the month.) They can dig up
pre-World War II terms like `axis of evil` while we are still committed to
post-Cold War terminology, less aggressive and much more diplomatic.

Ronald
Wright`s book Stolen Continents says in the context of the American Indians,
"An entire vocabulary is tainted with prejudice and condescension: whites
are soldiers, the Indians are warriors; whites live in towns, the Indians in
villages; whites have kings and generals, Indians have chiefs; whites have
states, Indians have tribes. Indians have ghost dances, whites have eschatology."
One could also point out that Red Indians were so called because Christopher
Columbus, thinking he had arrived in India, was surprised to find that the
native tribe was more red than brown. While political correctness has
substituted the Red for American, the `Indian` survives for no good reason that
we can think of, adding to our problems in defining Americans of Indian origin.
Moreover, why did the colonising British call the natives of Australia
`aborigines` while in India they used the term criminal tribes? If anybody
knows, do enlighten us.

Now,
after the Gujarat violence, (and also Mumbai 1993) it`s perhaps time to put
expressions like "communal riot" under the microscope. Both are words
which have long carried a meaning peculiar only to the subcontinent. Why should
the word `community` be used to describe a religious group? A community, says
the dictionary, consists of "the people who reside in one locality and
hare subject to the same laws, have the same interests." Such people may not
love each other, but they just don`t one fine day pick up hatchets and kill
each other. Religious groups NOT staying together do, it seems. Which brings us
to that other word, "riot". More than a decade ago, a riot would
typically erupt in a congested area where poorer people lived. A Muslim`s
vendor`s cart might be upset by a lumpen Hindu, sparking off a confrontation of
the two religious groups. Or a rape by a member of one group would enrage the
other. We used to say that it`s always the poor people who get killed in a
riot, while those of us living in newer parts of the city continued with our
normal lives.

Delhi 1984 changed all that. The poshest colonies in Delhi
were where it all began. After that the violence spread to less prosperous
areas like Trilokpuri. Members of a particular religion were the

The new term for self censorship is voluntary censorship, as proposed by companies like Netflix and Hotstar. ET reports that streaming video service Amazon Prime is opposing a move by its peers to adopt a voluntary censorship code in anticipation of the Indian government coming up with its own rules. Amazon is resisting because it fears that it may alienate paying subscribers.

Clearly, the run to the 2019 elections is on. A journalist received a call from someone saying they were from Aajtak channel and were conducting a survey, asking whom she was going to vote for in 2019. On being told that her vote was secret, the caller assumed she wasn't going to vote for 'Modiji'. The caller, a woman, also didn't identify herself. A month or two earlier the same journalist received a call, this time from a man, asking if she was going to vote for the BSP.